


Variations on Impulse

by ancestrallizard



Series: Risk Assessment [2]
Category: Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Blood, Fluff, M/M, Violence, both emotionally and literally bc fur, some eye gore but nothing too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard
Summary: Kazuya is unexpectedly cursed on a mission, and tries to ignore it best he can.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday fic for 2keyblades on tumblr. happy birthday friend its your fault this exists now

“Just try it.”

Kazuya tugged the hood of his new jacket down lower over his head and kept walking. 

“You just have to stay calm and listen. Won’t take a minute.”

He still didn’t respond. Hitoshura growled under his breath in frustration. Kazuya wouldn’t have been able to hear it but for his current state, the reason he’d gone on as remote a mission as he could, searching an abandoned mess of concrete blocks for a nest of rogue machines, the reason he was even wearing the hood in the first place. 

He wouldn’t say they were lost, exactly, but the decayed concrete maze was more labyrinthian than he’d initially thought, and at the rate they were going they wouldn’t find the machines for days. 

Their surroundings were all but abandoned, forgotten streets nearly swallowed up by resurgent plant life, but he still heard too much. Things moving in the building shells around them, birds calling kilometers away, distorted echoes ricocheting around them that he couldn’t interpret. He could swear he heard the grass dying. And his sense of smell, while not as new as a few days peviously, was still vastly distracting. Something nearby had died recently, and the cloyingly sweet rot-smell was turning his stomach. He doubted he could find the machines by listening even if he tried.

The half-demon caught his sleeve, slowing them both to a stop. “It’s not going away anytime soon. You should take the chance to get used to it while you can.”

He didn’t want to use it. He didn’t want to think about it, or anything else he was at the moment. But Hitoshura had a point – he probably wouldn’t get a chance to do this again in relative peace.

Kazuya took off his hood. Furred triangular ears on the top of his head rose from laying flat against his skull. They twitched slightly at the sounds around him. 

He closed his eye and listened. 

/////

Kazuya almost made it to the end of the fight with the pack of barghest unscathed. 

The demonic hounds were terrorizing farmlands, killing livestock without eating them and attacking people to make a name for themselves. Kazuya had been initially hopeful that could get them to listen without too much trouble, maybe even get them to leave without anyone dying. The moon was waxing crescent, nowhere close to full, and he knew a few of the younger members of the pack already.

But their leader, twice as large as the rest with huge talons curling from its paws, refused to speak to him. It attacked, and the rest followed suit, probably counting on their strength in numbers over Kazuya, Yuka, and their demons.

Against anyone else the pack may have stood a chance. There were fifteen of them and they were fast, dashing circles around he and Yuka until they blended together into one baying mass of drool and teeth, magic sparking from their breath and pelts. 

But they’d faced infinitely worse before, and it only took a few pointed mazionga spells from Yuka before most of the pack began to falter. 

Kazuya didn’t have magic at hand, but he still held his own, parrying countless lunges to his blind side. One of his counterattacks sent a barghest sprawling into the dirt and frightened off the smaller two looking to follow it. He moved closer, ready to land a final blow if he had to. 

It was the leader of the pack, struggling to right itself. A massive laceration stretching from its shoulder to its forearm bled profusely.

He hesitated at the sight long enough for the demon’s head to turn and a bloodshot eye to fix on him. The barghest glared the clearest ‘fuck you’ he’d ever seen and barked out a spell that hit him square in the chest. He was knocked back, and his head comes down on a rock. The impact sent stars exploding in his vision.

Yuka rounded on the demon after seeing off the rest of the stragglers, but she didn’t need to attack – the barghest scrambled up on its three good legs and bolted after the rest of its pack, tail between it’s legs.

She crouched next to him. “You okay?”

Kazuya didn’t know how to answer that. Colors had warped. The red of Yuka’s armor and the grass were the same washed out shade of yellow. Likewise, everything sounded wrong, high and strange, and everything smelled – not bad, exactly, but overwhelming. He could make out dirt, blood in the grass, ozone, and a million other things. His back ached. 

He tried to say “I’m fine”, but the reply came out garbled. His teeth were bulky and made his tongue sit oddly in his mouth, and his canine teeth were pressing into his bottom lip.

Kazuya sat up, hand to his forehead, but pulled it away immediately. His fingernails were longer and black, and white hairs sprouted on the back of his hand and down his arm. 

He held still while Yuka healed the back of his head in a flash of magic and ignored the panic starting to crawl through his guts. Again he tried to speak, to say ‘thanks’, and again the shape of the word felt strange in his mouth.

The nascent panic was not at all abated when she moved back, really looked at him, and said, “Don’t freak out.”

She helped him to his feet. He would have toppled over if she hadn’t gripped his forearms to steady him. His sense of balance was completely off-kilter, as if he were stuck in someone else’s body.

To Kazuya’s credit, he didn’t freak out. He didn’t freak out at the new grey and white hair sprouting over parts of his body, short and soft enough to be closer to fur than human hair, or the new sharpened teeth he nearly cut his lip on, or the large, pointed ears that had sprouted from the top of his head that twitched at every new sound of their own accord. He didn’t even freak out at the extra meter of spine he’d gained in the form of a long, feathery tail. 

He kept it together on the way back to town and on the way to the Kaifuku. It was only when the healer cast the spell, and cold light engulfed him, and he didn’t feel any different from before once it fades that he started to worry. 

It was probably a curse, certainly rare but similar enough to be recognizable as one, the healer explained, alternately glancing between Kazuya’s new ears and tail. He did not know what it did or how to go about figuring it out. It might go away on its own, it might not.

He nodded, staring down at his new fingernails. They were thicker now, shaper, but too blunt to really be claws. He didn’t know what he’d do if they were. He didn’t know if his eye was yellow now, either. He didn’t want to know. 

“He could not have been less helpful,” Yuka said later, once they’d returned to Kazuya’s room. 

“I’ve never seen it before either.” Hitoshura said, staring at Kazuya’s new ears. He made another reach for them that Kazuya ducked. “Looks harmless, though.”

(In an fortuitous coincidence, the half-demon had shown up on the same day they tried to clear the barghest pack from the farmland, and was waiting for them in town when they finally came limping back. His first response to Kazuya’s new condition was to laugh. Hard.) 

The new appendages and senses were irksome, especially the ears, as he had to more strap of his eye patch to an odd angle. He just hoped it went away without too much trouble.

But it didn’t go away that day, or the day after that. He confined himself to his room, donning the hooded jacket and wrapping his tail around his waist to look some semblance of normal for the rare times he had to go outside. He looked more like a cheap Halloween costume than one who’d fused themselves with a demon, but he didn’t want to bring misaimed outrage or vengeance on Yuka or Hitoshura by extension. 

After two days with no change in sight, he decided to leave. Machines were attacking, sometimes killing people, in the west, and he was already planning to check it out after he and Yuka returned from handling the barghest. Hitoshura immediately invited himself along. 

“You’re sure about doing this?” Yuka asked Kazuya as he packed for the journey.

His ears twitched in response to something crashing two doors down, and he resisted the urge to physically hold them in place. “I can’t stay in just because I was too slow to dodge a curse. And it doesn’t do anything besides make me look ridiculous. I’ll be fine” 

He tried to force a smile he didn’t feel. Yuka gave him long, measured look, before handing over the rations from the tabletop he’d been looking for. “Just, please don’t put yourself in too much danger.” 

/////

His ears swiveled (and that was still so, so unnerving, to have new alien musculature contract under his skin), catching surrounding sounds like radar dishes. Without the stimulus of sight, the sounds were even more crowded and chaotic then before. It was all too much, he could barely even think with – 

Wait. One sound in the crowd, nearly lost amongst all the rest, rang familiar. He singled it out from the mess as if picking out a cord from a snarled knot of wires. The longer he focused on it, the more the other sounds faded into the background. 

Distant. Heavy, uneven shrieks of rusted metal and mechanical footsteps.

“I hear it.” There was undisguised wonder in his voice when he opened his eye, but he couldn’t bring himself to be self-conscious just then. “I can hear them! We’re still far away but I think I can track it.” 

Hitoshura nodded. “Lead the way, then.”

There was plain approval in his eyes. Kazuya fought down the sudden impulse in his back muscles that nearly set his tail wagging. 

/////

After a few more wrong turns, they finally locate the machine’s nest

The roof and a sizeable chunk of the exterior of what must have been a warehouse had long since collapsed, and an uneven mound of steel rose from the remains, like a steel hornets’ nest consuming the rest of the building. Small machines moved around the ground and circled above like the insects they resembled. 

For some unknown reason, even if they were never designed to, robots let loose tended to congregate together, especially if they became possessed by spirits or demons. When enough of them found each other, they sometimes formed colony structures. They also attacked other beings of their own volition without clear reason or warning, even hoarding the bodies afterward, as the human and demon bones strewn about the street attested to.

The machines in the street moved too smoothly and purposefully to be solely human-driven. Possessed then. A harder fight for no payoff, since the pieces couldn’t be reused for anything after they were destroyed.

A piercing, artificial scream cut through the air. Kazuya’s ears flattened in pain. The few machines already in the street rolled, clawed, and ran straight for them, while more started pouring out from the collapsed colony structure. 

Hitoshura summoned his own demons while Kazuya shook off the ringing in his ears. The half-demon looked entirely self-assured, almost bored. Kazuya wished he shard his confidence.

The machines were decaying, partially shielded by threadbare casings, and some threw themselves forward on shattered appendages. They weren’t as large as they could be for robots, but some in the crowd still towered over the both of them. The stench of burnt wires and arcane energies made his eye water. He’d faced such hordes before, but the sight of them still made the new hair along his neck and spine stand on end. 

He summoned Pascal and Yaksa while Hitoshura and his own demons took on the first wave. Hitoshura kept the majority back with elemental walls of fire or electricity, and the few to make it through the barrier would then be taken out by the rest of the demons.

The machines had no self-preservation instinct – endless waves hurtled themselves at the intruders, heedless of the swords, fangs, or magic that tore them to pieces before they reached their destination. Kazuya saw more than a few practically hurl themselves at Pascal’s jaws before the demon soundly dispatched them and tossed them aside. 

Kazuya stayed back. There wasn’t much for him to do, but things could and would always go wrong in a fight, even when victory seemed a certainty. 

He specifically watched Hitoshura. The half-demon started off strong, but after over to 20 powerful elemental attacks anyone would start feeling strain. The more he cast, the quicker his shoulders slumped after the spell. It was taking him longer to cast successive spells, and there was still no end to the horde in sight. 

Kazuya was searching for a lull in the fighting to give Hitoshura a canteen of Soma water when his hackles stood on end. Something was in his blind spot. He turned. 

A machine, half melted, sped toward him, its few remaining arms moving like insect legs. It would be close enough to grab him in less than a second.

He dropped his sword and tackled the droid.

He pinned its arms to the ground and sank his teeth up to the gums into the softer flexible wiring where a living being’s neck would be. He wrenched it to the side, and the head of the droid came off with the motion. At the same time he sunk his nails through the shoulder like it was a rotten piece of meat and threw the entire arm away. 

Kazuya stared down at the pile of scrap metal. My jaw should be broken, a distant part of his mind thought after he stumbled to his feet. My jaw should be broken. This thing should have torn me apart. His body had entirely moved on its own accord. 

There was an odd, light feeling bubbling through his body, tickling his throat like a precursor to laughter. Exhilaration, maybe, or disbelief. 

But there was no time to think. The machines were still stampeding towards them, Hitoshura might be close to exhausting his magic, and other demons were visibly slowing as well. He ran to join them.

As his eye fixed on machines left standing, everything outside of them blurred and fell out of focus. He barely remembered to give Hitoshura the canteen before he passed him.

Everything went blank after that. He didn’t know how many machines he faced, didn’t remember how long he fought. He existed to destroy, tearing through metal as if it were air and searching for the next target with no regard to time or body. Attacks deflected off his skin, never slowing him for more than a second. He vaguely smelled blood, burnt hair and fabric, but they were so inconsequential that they might as well have come from another planet.

/////

Awareness returned piecemeal. 

There were bits of metal wedged behind his teeth. Oil stained his tongue. His ears stood straight up, searching. His breathing was strained, shallow, but was still growling despite it. The vibrations rebounded painfully off a bruised, possibly broken rib. His nails, cracked and broken, were still sunken in something. 

His eye roved the field before him, the broken forms that surrounded him.   
(Were they all dead? Where were the rest? How could he find the rest?)

He must have destroyed over thirty of them, but he had even more energy than before (how long ago was before?) – it snapped under nails and along his spine, and he was sick with anger. He’d been angry before, but it was nothing like this. The compulsion to keep fighting, keep destroying, twisted in and over itself in his chest like a caged animal.

But he didn’t mean to cause this much damage, not like this. When did he get so close to the factory?

He smelled Hitoshura approach him from – somewhere (outside his radius, nothing existed outside the radius. Needed to destroy where was anything else was it outside?) 

“What the hell!” He shouted, exhilaration ringing clear in his voice. “I didn’t know you could do that now!”

He didn’t know he could do that either, Kazuya meant to say, but he couldn’t move his jaw. He couldn’t move anything, for that matter. 

He struggled above the rising tide of fear and tried to will some muscle, any muscle, to move. 

He couldn’t so much as blink.

Kazuya scanned the area, his tail thrashed in the dirt occasionally, but none of it was of his own volition. He was stuck as a passenger in his own skull.

A shadow fell over him. His head turned, and again Kazuya had nothing to do with the movement. Hitoshura was looking down at him. Kazuya read his name on his lips. 

(He’d moved into the radius)

And this made Kazuya slam the brakes on anything he’d been attempting to get himself to move. He tried to root himself into the asphalt. (Don’t do this don’t do this no – ).

He moved, quicker than he ever had in his life, and reached for Hitoshura’s throat.

The half-demon knocked him back easily. The solid blow would have knocked the air out of him when he was completely human. His claws were purposefully tucked in on his palm, so the blow didn’t tear at his chest.

“Kazuya?”

Hitoshura could tear him apart in an instant, but the knowledge made no difference to whatever drove him. He charged again, and Kazuya could do nothing to stop it.

Hitoshura caught him this time, held him at not-quite arms length. Kazuya’s body snarled and thrashed, claws swiping out haphazardly. The half-demon flinched, barely. A bead of blood welled up just below his right eye, fell alongside one of the glowing blue lines on his face.

This, finally, made him falter. He was actually capable of hurting him now (And the blood around his eye, drawn by a demonoid claw, pulled other memories to surface so suddenly that they overrode even the mindless rage.)

Hitoshura pulled him closer. “ _Dormina._ ” 

Instantly, day turned to night. Kazuya’s muscles slackened as the urge to (rend destroy kill) fought the numbness overtaking him. Everything was too heavy, too much to get past. Had to stop.

He was aware, vaguely, of the arms still holding him, before oblivion swallowed him completely.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We now return to our regularly schedule fic already in progress

_When Kazuya fought Takeshi in the Cathedral, he came close to death more than once. If it wasn’t for Yuka and Pascal, he would have died. Takeshi was fast, almost too fast to follow and react to._

_He didn’t remember what his former friend did to tear his eye away._

_He hadn’t even felt any pain, just saw a blur of motion and a glimpse of reflective yellow eyes. Shock deadened the sudden impact that left him stumbling as half the world went dark._

_Most likely, he just tore at it with a quick swipe, leaving an empty socket in his wake_

_But the dreams were different._

_In his dreams, he is aware of every increment as Takeshi sinks his claws into the soft edges of his eye socket._

_He can’t move._

_He’s aware of pressure he’s never felt before as the claws close around the back of his eyeball, aware as blood leaks down his face, into his eye but he can’t blink it away because the skin is being pinned back._

_He tries to run but he can’t move._

_He’s aware of skin tearing, the blood flow swelling from trickles to rivulets, down his face and over his lips, as the claws tighten, begin to pull._

/////

Kazuya woke all at once. 

A few lone stars shone through the tree canopy in the pitch-black sky. He was stretched out under a blanket, not far from a steadily burning fire. Hitoshura was poking at it with a stick. The ground was relatively soft, true earth rather than pavement. They may have been in the woods they passed through when journeying to the machines.

A bone deep ache pervaded his entire body. His muscles felt like they’d been wrung out, and an awful taste crusted in his mouth. The rage was gone, and had left ashen exhaustion in it wake. 

When he tried to push himself up, the half-demon pulled a canteen with regular water from Kazuya’s pack and held it out to him. “I had my demons heal you some, but you really managed to do a number on yourself.”

His hand shook, but he managed to take the canteen and hold it long enough to swill some water and spit it out. 

It didn’t chase out most of the taste, and his throat was still too dry. It cracked once when he asked, “Your eye..?”

“Fine. You didn’t ever graze it.”

“My demons…”

“Returned them to your COMP”, Hitoshura answered. “You should talk to them when you can. Yuka too. They’re worried about you.”

He nodded and pulled the blanket back over himself. 

Hitoshura looked fine, sounded fine. He wouldn’t try to lie about it if he wasn’t. 

“M’sorry,” Kazuya forced out past a stabbing headache. “Sorry. Don’t…don’t know what happened.”

Hitoshura laughed once, humorlessly. “Figured you didn’t.”

Hitoshura moved closer to Kazuya. He was close enough to touch, now. Kazuya wanted that contact, any contact, so suddenly that it almost choked him, but the sight-smell-sensation of clawing at his face overrode it. 

He sank into fragments of memory.

When he opened his eye again it was morning. 

Hitoshura was curled up alongside the extinguished fire, dead asleep. He looked no worse for wear – there wasn’t even a scar from where Kazuya attacked him. He dragged himself to his feet and draped his blanket over the half-demon. 

He felt surprisingly good, apart from the chunks of fur missing from his tail and liberal shredding and burning of parts of his clothes. Even the foul taste in his mouth had receded. 

He took the quiet moment to message Yuka about what happened the day before. By the time he settles on something both honest and how to phrase it in the least alarming way possible, Hitoshura had woke up.

They exchanged greetings – “Morning,””Mm,” – and ate. All at once Kazuya was famished, and finished his portion of food in seconds. 

Then there was the curse to contend with. 

“I don’t know what to do now.” Kazuya admitted. “ I was going to just try getting into fights until it went away. I’ve done it to cure curses before.”

Hitoshura stared, uncomprehensive. “Why didn’t you just pay to cure them before?”

“Cost too much. A lot of the time it was better to fight until you burned through it.” 

He’d never exactly been rolling in money, especially before the Cathedral, and getting a curse cured was usually wildly expensive. Fighting through that much pain or paralysis was a severe pain in the ass, even with support, but it usually worked.

“I got rid of the few robots you didn’t yesterday, so can’t use them.” He kicked at some of the ashes from the fire. “Burn it off…”

A suggestive grin spread across face. “We could-“

Kazuya was too preoccupied to feel embarrassed at the implication. “No.” 

He laughed, then went back to mulling over solutions. “You could fight me? I’d see it coming this time, so you probably won’t get close enough to hit me.”

Kazuya fidgeted and traced hand over his arm. A chunk of it had been gouged out the day before, but was seamlessly whole when inspected it after he woke up. He shook his head. “There’s a bunker Northwest I wanted to check that I’ve heard about. It’s supposed to be almost impossible to get to, but maybe that would be enough to burn through it? And if we find anything there we can divide it.”

It was a possibly baseless heard-it-from-someone-who-heard-it-from-someone-else rumor, but the dangerous terrain part of it was definitely real, the result of some bygone natural disaster or a cataclysmic fight between demons. If there ever was a bunker, it might not be there anymore.

Hitoshura appraised him sidelong, then shrugged. “If that’s what you want. And you don’t have to pay me for being here.”

The weather held out at least, clouds continuously grey and ominous but never giving over to rain. They followed the directions he’d gotten from the same person who swore something was buried in the mountainous terrain (Kazuya remembered directions fine, he just had trouble applying them to a physical area sometimes).

At every turn they take the roughest, most dangerous path possible. There were plenty of options. The terrain became alpine in a heartbeat, and some of the slopes were nearly vertical. 

At one impasse Hitoshura tried leading him up a tree in order to reach the top of a cliff face. It worked for him – The half-demon climbed the near branchless 20-meter tree like a cat and easily jumped from the uppermost branches to the top of the small cliff.

Kazuya tried to climb the tree twice, and twice fell before he could get very far. Enhanced strength did not necessarily coincide with refined coordination. He climbed the slippery, crumbling rocks behind the tree to reach the top, where he nearly slipped and fell, and was once again reminded why he didn’t like the outdoors.

They didn’t stop to rest except to sleep at night, though Kazuya resisted it at first.

(“Should have figured this would make you more work obsessed,” Hitoshura yawned that first night, when Kazuya wanted to keep going after he realized could see through the dusk. “If you won’t stop for you, stop for me. I’m tired.”)

The trek did let the brighter sides of the curse shine through. He was able to keep up with Hitoshura’s pace for one, and even over impossible scarred earth they make faster time than Kazuya ever thought he could. He also wakes up without pain, from anything in recent days or from old battle scars, and that alone almost makes him consider the whole ordeal worth it. He even had enough energy left over to talk about the few projects with his COMP he’d been working on before the whole curse mess happened. 

They reached the bunker after a day and a half of constant travel. 

If there had ever been anything there before, it was probably long gone. The door was blown off its hinges, and thick layers of earth and leaves encrusted the entryway steps. Stale drafts of air from the depths smelled like decay and death, and Kazuya had to bite back a defensive growl. They left it alone, though Hitoshura glanced back at it more than once when they moved away from it.

For all that he kept up with Hitoshura, he still maintained a physical distance. But fatigue from the journey was apparently enough to wear down the barriers he’d built around himself. 

He wrapped his arms around him. “I was wondering when you’d finally give out.”

Kazuya muttered something in reply. The sun was still out, albeit setting, but it was a struggle to stay awake. 

He nuzzled his face into the side of the half-demon’s neck. Kazuya’s sense of smell was still overwhelming, even days after getting it, but it could be overwhelming in good ways too. Hitoshura’s scent was comforting and secure, the same way seeing him after a long absence felt. 

A hand carefully settled between his ears and started petting him. 

“I knew they were soft,” the half-demon said, almost to himself.

The craving for contact surfaced again, and he leaned into the touch. He would have taken almost anything, but the sensation of a hand combing back hair felt particularly good. 

It was calm, and nice, and suddenly interrupted when Hitoshura stopped petting him and stuck a hand through one of the gaping holes burnt into his shirt. He brushed his hand, warm as the rest of him, along Kazuya’s side. 

“All of it’s soft,” He marveled. “You really lucked out.”

Now there was a phrase he wasn’t used to hearing. Hitoshura grinned at the shade of red Kazuya’s face must have been turning (not that he would know, even with a mirror), and took his hand away to pet behind his ears again. He was thoroughly relaxed within seconds. 

He let his control slacken, and his tail thumped unevenly against the ground.

“If I’m stuck like this,” Kazuya sighed, “I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing. Though I know at least a few people who’ll give me hell for it.” 

“They won’t.” He said. His tone sounded something closer to ‘they won’t do any such thing if they value being alive’.

Implicit threats against potential enemies probably shouldn’t have made him feel that happy, but it did. It was that, and all of the time Hitoshura had been with him the past few days, guiding and anchoring him without hesitation. He’d never felt alone.

He tightened his grip around him. “Thanks, Shura,” he said, and dragged himself from almost-sleep to lean over and kiss him. 

He pulled back almost immediately. Well, that was different. 

He didn’t answer the questioning noise the half-demon made as he moved, more awake now, into a position to kiss him more properly. The barest twinge of unease passed through him when he cupped his face and leaned in, but it was easily ignored. If the rest of Hitoshura was warm, his lips were nearly burning. 

So he was right. He licked once across the seam of the other’s mouth just to be sure. 

There was an awkward sound when he pulled away and their lips separated, though the hand on his back kept him from moving too far away. “I _can_ taste it.” 

It was possibly the most confused Kazuya had ever seen him. “What?”

“I can taste everything you’ve tasted from the past few days. In order too, it’s incredible.”

Hitoshura blinked a few times. “Great.”

There was no practical application to the knowledge, but it was interesting to him all the same. Though the taste of food reminded him of how hungry he was, and tired, and exhaustion sank back into his bones so quickly that a piecing headache lanced his skull. He yawned, moving off of the half-demon and lay on ground beside him as if it were a mattress. 

There was one more thing he had to know. “What color is my eye?”

“Sort of red.”

Not yellow, at least. He could live with red if he had to. 

/////

He knew the curse had dissipated before he woke up.

The pain was the first indicator. Kazuya stretched after sleeping on the hard earth, and immediately regretted both actions. As he dragged himself to his feet, a cold morning breeze blew through the holes in his shirt and cut him through to the bone. 

“So it’s all gone?” Hitoshura asked once he was awake.

“Yeah.” Kazuya’s leg twinged, as it sometimes did in the morning, and he stared with trepidation down the slope. “Wish I changed back closer to home, though.”

“It’s fine. I can carry you down if you need me to.”

Kazuya did end up needing help down the mountain, more than once. He was still too happy being himself again to begrudge that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I'll learn how to use tense.
> 
> If you also want to talk about smt or ridiculous rare pairs feel free to talk to me at tumblr: ancestrallizard.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know that Frog is a status condition in SMT 1? I couldn't work that into the story proper but I should have.


End file.
